Bits and pieces of my life. I am a lifelong Christian. I have been married for over 41 years to Stan. No children. We have 1 Italian Greyhound named Capodimonte and 2 calico cats named Capt. Fishipants (a rare MALE calico) and Daphne Doolittle. We have 9 nieces/nephews and 10 grandnieces/nephews whom we love. My hobbies are genealogy, reading, digital scrapbooking, history, dogs, homemaking. This is a personal blog, not a business. I share what interests me I am not selling or making a profit.

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..........Contact me at Mom25dogs@gmail.com.........

Thursday, October 16, 2008

This beautiful black and silver Schnauzer came to see us today. She's only 7 months old but her owner already has her trained. We were impressed. When he said "Sit", I sat, but then I realized he was talking to little Zoe. You see my brood has me trained very well!

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

I got this book at the recent library book sale. I go every Fall and stock up. I'm glad I got this one. It has kept me rivetted since I opened it up to the first page. Coleman does a great job keeping you involved.

Franklin Bradshaw (from a Mormon family) married Berenice Harriett Jewett (raised in an irreligious family) on Halloween, 1924. They had their first child, Robert Jewett Bradshaw in August, 1926. They had a girl, Marilyn, in 1929. Their next daughter, Elaine, was born in 1931. Their final child was a 3rd girl, Frances Bernice Bradshaw born on 4/6/1938. They lived in Salt Lake City, Utah. They had a rough beginning during the 1920's and then the Great Depression. It was hand-to-mouth for their first years of marriage. But Franklin Bradshaw was a workaholic and determined to make money. He started an auto parts store when they lived in Provo, Utah and they lived in an apartment over the store. In 1937, he expanded by moving to Salt Lake City and opening another auto parts store. He bought a brick bungalow in May, 1937 and the family moved there. It would be their home for the rest of their lives.

Each of the parents had some severe problems in adapting to life. Franklin was very smart and had great business savvy. But he was also a miser, plain and simple. He had penny saved and scrimped all his life and he was so "thrifty" that it was beyond frugality and into miserliness. He became so successful and rich and this validated his ways and was the only way he felt successful. At home, Berenice was an agitator and nervous, always having nervous spells. When Franklin was home, she made him miserable. Home was not a safe haven for him so he came home less and less. He worked from 6:30am until 9:00pm, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. At work he found the respect and validation he needed and found a friendly atmosphere. Things went the way he wanted them too (no matter how eccentric he was and how weird his "ways" were). At home, he was nagged, berated, put down, had the children turned against him, etc. Berenice lived a lonely life and I can certainly understand how an emotionally high strung woman could become such a shrew living in the environment she was living in. But, on the other hand, she brought a lot of it on herself. Berenice's constant drama only grew as did Franklin's withdrawal from his wife and children. Their problems fed off of each other and destroyed the kids. They had a very dysfunctional life.

Their son, Robert, had some type of mental or behavioral problems maybe since birth. But Berenice and Franklin raised him in all the wrong ways which exacerbated Robert's problems. He eventually began having epileptic seizures on a daily basis but they didn't take him to a doctor. They let their oldest daughter, Marilyn, take care of Robert. She became the mother of the group. Berenice ignored it and Franklin didn't want to spend the money. Robert was very smart. Coleman said he taught himself Russian and Chinese. He was no dummy. Robert joined the Navy as a young man but when he had his seizures, he was out of the Navy in just a couple of months. Robert became enough of a problem that they decided to do a lobotomy on him in order to calm him down. I really think it might have been Berenice's way of getting control and Franklin's way of escaping his troubled son. The lobotomy didn't cure him and he was institutionalized for the rest of his short life. Berenice went to visit him but she agitated him and played her mind control games with him to where it took days for him to calm back down after she left. The doctors asked her to quit coming but she felt it was her duty. Franklin refused to go visit his son. Out of sight, out of mind. Poor Robert wrote home and constantly talked about how much he wanted to get well and come home and learn the business so his daddy would be proud of him. It must have been his obsession to be like dad (a dad who couldn't be in the same room with his son) and make his dad proud of him and to become the patriarch of the family once his parents were gone. But it was not to be. Robert is the saddest of all of them. He probably was the least complicated and yet, the other children were the "smart" ones.

The two older girls went to college and made good marriages. They got out of Salt Lake City and never went back. Marilyn lived in NY and Elaine lived in California. Frances became the spoiled brat who grew up into a monster. She was born about the time that things were beginning to prosper for the Bradshaw family so she never knew any serious deprivation, except the deprivation of feeling unloved by both her parents. Berenice didn't love Frances, she obsessed over her out of guilt because she didn't love her children. Money was becoming available so Berenice spent money on Frances that she never did for the other 3 children. Frances grew up expecting it. She also grew up seeing how her mother manipulated Franklin and how she pitted the children against each other or against their father. Berenice was bad enough at the mind games but Frances became the master. She learned how to manipulate every person she ever came in contact with to her advantage. Her parents, siblings, 2 husbands, 3 children (Larry, Marc, and Lavinia), college friends, friends, social contacts, etc. Everyone became fodder for her convenience. She wanted money and she wanted it NOW! She was such a tyrant that she would have hysterical temper tantrums and threaten with anything that worked to get what she wanted. Her children were raised by this drama queen (and I don't use this nicely) and they became just like her. She taught them how to beg her parents for money, how to steal from her parents, how to forge checks on her parents bank accounts, etc, etc. She blackmailed, threatened violence or suicide, ANYTHING to get what she wanted. We aren't talking about a 2 yr old, but a grown woman with children of her own. Unfortunately, Berenice was living in a La La land believing everything Frances said and nothing anyone else would say. She totally blocked out her other children, her husband, her family or in laws and only focused on Frances. Frances did the same thing between Larry and Marc. Marc was her favorite and Larry was treated like so much trash. Once trouble came, Lavinia became the new favorite and the one that all was lavished on. But let me say, right up front, when I say "favorite" it was not a good thing. Larry suffered the worst abuse. But Marc and Lavinia were abused too, just to a lesser degree and this made them try all the harder to keep her happy so they wouldn't be locked out of the house like Larry was. Larry was used as the scapegoat to keep the others in line. She always threatened to lock them out and did it often. Children left to sleep in hallways and stairwells and walk the street of NY City because she has a fit of pique. She would threaten them with homelessness, being poor if their grandparents (or their father's) didn't come across with money to keep them in style (and we aren't talking about living in the projects but living in the best places and buying anything she wanted). She was totally dependent on the money that she scammed out of Berenice, Franklin or her ex husbands. She did all the drama and then would sneak around stealing, hiding assets from divorce courts, etc. to drain everyone around her of their money. She would threaten to commit suicide by trying to "jump out of the window" and scare her children to death. They grew up in this abnormal, greed-filled, drama until it made them into the same way.

I've spent way too much time describing this sick family (sans Marilyn and Elaine who seemed to be miraculously normal despite what happened to them). It was just eery how bad things got. Now for the mystery. Franklin has become a multi millionaire with a lot of auto parts stores in Utah. But they still live in the little bungalow and buys his clothes in thrift stores and drives their old cars to the ground before getting new practical cars. He hides his stock certificates in magazine and books and hidey holes in his Salt Lake City store. He constantly pores over his mineral leases and stocks and his books and tries all the loopholes in the tax codes so he can hoard his money and keep it safe. He keeps Berenice on a tight leash because she has become such a tool of Frances' greed. Berenice steals money from her husband to send to Frances so Franklin doesn't trust her either. The tighter he becomes, the more Berenice, Frances, Larry, and Marc get desperate and willing to do anything to get ahold of the money. Now, Franklin is found killed by gunshot in his store early one Sunday morning.

WHO DID IT?!? You will have to read this book to find out! Very interesting read!

I hope and pray that this family has found some normality and peace in the years since this book was written 1985.

I really looked forward to reading this book but I have been very disappointed. How can a book about J. Edgar Hoover be boring? I don't know, but this one was to me. I've read 3/4 of the way through, so I can honestly say that I gave it a good try.

J. Edgar Hoover was a sad person. His ambition, ego and political maneuvering was very sad. His whole life was about his job as Director of the FBI. He was very close to his mother while she was alive but after her death, he had no one that he was close to except Clyde Tolson as his Associate Director of the FBI. Clyde Tolson was a little too close of a friend if you know what I mean. They were inseparable. But Hoover's life comes off as so one dimensional and sad. And it is scary to know what the FBI (Hoover) did and, I'm sure, continues to do as the Big Brother of our nation. The spying, tailing, wire tapping, mail opening, bugging, blackmailing, etc. goes on even more now than then. And it wasn't (and isn't) always for the protection of America or it's citizens. It's mostly for the protection of the elite, the politicians, and for the best of their little empires. Politics are just so sleazy and corrupt. Yuck! I prefer the simple life.

Our garage has been a sore point with both of us. It's a double garage with a shop room. Stan put up a lot of shelving up so we could be as organized in our small space as we could be (we used to have a full basement and a garage for storage and Stan's shop so we downsized on his space when we moved here). He had installed some shelving that was over the cars PLUS shelving all the way around the high ceiling in the garage and shelves all around (to the 10" ceiling) in the shop. So we had plenty of shelving and such. We had also set up our hot tub in the garage for privacy but I don't like going out there and be surrounded by junk so I had about quit using it. Stan moved it to the deck off the garage and we've cleaned it out. It will stay there so when we get through, we will fill it back up and start using it again.

Despite our best efforts, the garage and shop always looks messy anyway. And, Stan is not as organized with his stuff like I am so his shop drove me up the wall! He took his big toolbox to a friend's shop just down the road where he can lock it up and get it out of the way. But here is the rest of the shop:

We went through everything and culled out what we could. My Dad came over and helped us and he took a pickup load of stuff that we don't need but Dad wanted to recycle. I took a load to Habitat for Humanity. Dad has a huge barn full of junk. But he really does recycle it. While metal has been so high, he has been recycling anything metal that he had stored at his shop. He keeps the upper floor full of wood that he keeps until he needs it and eventually he usually does find a need for it. Ronnnie and Luke removed the garage door on Saturday. On Sunday, Dad & Stan removed all the metal parts, rails, and bolts from the sections so he could recycle the metal. He took the nice wood panels (it was a nice, expensive garage door for when the house was built in 1984) to store in his barn loft. They removed the over-the-car shelving and the shelves from around the garage. The only ones we left are on the house wall (where the freezer is).

We have to have storage for household stuff like his bike, golf clubs, coolers, grilling stuff. So Stan is going to build a wall across the back of the garage (where that step-up is). We will use this "breezeway" for that kind of storage and it will be hidden. That wall will have 2 doors. One on each side. The one on the left will be to access the house door. The one on the right hand side will access the door that opens to the back yard.

Using a charcoal grill, he gets his charcoal hot and places some dry wood (use a wood that will season the meat like apple wood, mesquite, oak, etc). Stan rubs the butt roast and wraps in aluminum foil. He places it on the rack on the grill and closes it up and leaves it for an hour. Then he went out and peeled back the aluminum foil and closed the grill and left it overnight to get the smoke flavor. Early the next morning, he brought it into the house and I put it in a casserole dish (still wrapped in the tin foil) and leave it in the oven on 225F throughout the day. It is so tender that it pulls apart easily and is ready to serve. You can serve with a bottle of BBQ Sauce because some might want to put some sauce on their serving. But I like it just like it is.